UMass Student Senate Lengthens Nomination Period
UMass Boston’s student senate has moved its nomination period from March 8 to March 30 for the spring elections. Any student wishing to run for senate should apply at student life on the third floor of the campus center.
Station Nightclub Prosecutors Present More Evidence
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors of the Station nightclub criminal case have found new evidence in the form of an audiotape made by one of the concert-goers who tragically lost his life.
Matthew Pickett, a 1993 graduate of UMass Boston, attended the Great White show with recording equipment to tape the set.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives retrieved the tape which will be used by the prosecution against the owners of the club, Jeffery and Michael Derderian as well as Great Whites former tour manager, Daniel Biechele. All three parties face 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
While the Attorney General did not reveal the contents of the tape, a representative was quoted by the Providence Journal as saying that the recording “captures Matthew Pickett’s dying moments.”
Nonprofit Organizations Bolster Massachusetts Job Market
According to The Boston Globe, a study released by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth has concluded that 420,671 people now work for nonprofit organizations in the Commonwealth.
UMass Boston economist Randy Albelda, looking at Gov. Mitt Romney’s recent statement that Massachusetts has cut more city and state employees then any other state, focused on the negative effects this might possibly have on the commonwealth.
“What we may be doing is pushing off what was unionized, state work into the nonprofit sector,” Albelda tells the Globe.
Albelda continues that usually these nonprofit organizations don’t have relative benefits in comparison to their state counterparts.
The only locations holding higher percentages in the nonprofit sector are North Dakota, Washington, D.C., and Vermont. These nonprofit organizations include anything ranging from universities and hospitals to small soup kitchens.
Albelda feels this study will fuel the fire of the debate of whether or not the state should bare the cost of employee benefits.
UMass Student Involved in Bike Incident
UMass student Derrick Cazzard was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in conjunction with an incident in which a bike was dropped on a woman’s head.
The Detroit Free Press reports that, in an incident that included alcohol consumption, a young man thought to be a friend of Cazzard, dropped a ten speed bike off a balcony.
According to The Allston Brighton TAB, a couple was walking down the street in Boston when the woman was hit in the head with a full can of beer. When her boyfriend confronted the men, they threw a ten speed off the balcony and hit the woman again in the head causing her to bleed. The man, Justin Towne of Acton, was arrested upon giving an incriminating statement to police.
The TAB reports that Cazzard was arrested when upon police arrival and questioning, he began to shout obscenities and refused to leave when asked to do so.
Both men are to appear in Boston Municipal Court on April 1, for a pretrial hearing. The woman injured was treated at Beth Israel and released.